“LOVE this!”

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Robin’s comment was made on this week’s Tuesday Poem, in which I posted my poem The Wayfarer, from my Ithaca Conversations sequence.

To read the poem, click on the title:

The Wayfarer

“The chief duty of a narrative sentence is to lead to the next sentence … [because] the basic function of the narrative sentence is to keep the story going and keep the reader going with it.”

~ Ursula Le Guin, Steering The Craft

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What can I say, except “Hear, hear!” and “Bravo!” and /or any number of other expressions of authorly enthusiasm and approval. Whenever I am tempted to overwrite (the temptation arising out of my love affair with language and words), i.e. at least every other sentence, this dictum brings me back to terra firma.

As for this being the fourth and final quote—well, I could go on forever, but I hope I’ve given you sufficient flavour over the past four Saturdays, that you’ll feel compelled to seek out Steering the Craft for yourself. Honestly, whether you are a writer or aspiring writer yourself, or just love reading about the art and craft, I don’t think you will be disappointed.

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is traversing the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth. Currently, we’re in “G.”

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Gray Lands:   the desolate plains that adjoin the Wall of Night

‘The wind was blowing again, no longer a full Wall storm but driving in gusts, bringing dust and grit from the jagged peaks that towered above the Gray Lands.  It blew under the bivouac where the small band of fugitives lay hidden and shrilled around its perimeter.’

~ The Heir Of Night: The Wall of Night Book One; Chapter 25 — The River Of No Return

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‘She turned away, but another voice spoke out of the heart of the cairn, ominous as distant thunder: “There is always a price … And now Winter’s heart lies buried in these gray lands, Winter’s blood soaked into barren ground.”’

~ from ©  The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 32 — Cockcrow

Lots of writing, that’s what, for starters. I am now into the penultimate section of Daughter Of Blood, The Wall Of Night Book Three and there is not a great deal to report beyond that I shall keep writing, writing — in a fashion that makes authors otherwise very dull sorts of creatures indeed 😉 — until it is done. And hope to reach the shores of the magical realm encapsulated by those two words “The End”, as soon as may be…

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Lots of writing doesn’t generally make for lots of reading time, so I am a little behind on the “Just Arrived” list — but I can report that I have ‘finally’ read Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean At The End Of The Lane and will be sharing my terribly important thoughts with you sometime next week, most likely on Monday.  So ‘watch this space…’

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Otherwise, I am pleased to say that I have some great new poems coming up to share with you as Tuesday Poems…

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And in case you missed them, I’ve done two posts recently for my other regular blogging gigs:

BookSworn Writers: When Characters We Love Die

(There’s some nice discussion on this one.)

Supernatural Underground: Longhand Pages — A Writing Touchstone

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Enjoy the rest of the week!

USA

UK/AU/NZ

You may recall, a ways back in the mists of early this year, I did a “Just Arrived” post for Miserere, An Autumn Tale, the first novel by my fellow BookSworn author, Teresa Frohock. I then went on to give you my report back, here.

As I said at the time though, Teresa and I had done a book swap—and now Teresa has posted her report on The Heir Of Night.

Here’s a snippet of what she has to say:

“Lowe utilizes necromancy and other dark arts to give the novel the right touch of dread for epic fantasy fans—not so much as to qualify for horror, but just enough to send a shiver down your spine.”

To read Teresa’s full review, click on:

Teresa Frohock On The Heir Of Night

Apparently, reading HEIR also sparked more epic thoughts on Teresa’s part, so you may also be interested to read her post:

Epic or Not, That Is The Question

Have some Wednesday fun with both the links. 😉

The Wayfarer: Odysseus at Dodoma

Acorns lie strewn with old leaves, thick
as years beneath the shadow of spreading oaks
where an old woman stoops, picking up sticks
that are no more or less twisted than she, binding
them onto her bent back, and watching with one
bright, blackbird eye as the wayfarer approaches,
an oar balanced across his knotted shoulder, his eyes
narrowed between deep seams, as one who has looked
out to numerous horizons and seen wonders: the moon’s
twinned horns rising from a twilit sea like some mythic
beast, awe and terror bound into the one moment
of seeing – those same eyes strayed now into this land
of low, green hills where the margin of the world
is always close as the line of the next, wooded slope
meeting sky, and where a crone hobbles closer
beneath her load, head twisted up to see him better,
curious as a crow, cackling to think there can be
any burden greater than hers in this world of suffering,
flapping work-worn hands and husking at him
in her cracked voice, bidding him return to the hearth
fire and the home isle, to sit in the sunlit porch
with grandchildren clutching at his knees –
but the wanderer hears only the ravens cawing,
lifting in clouds from the sacred grove, darkening
the sun with their wings, crying out that he is fated,
condemned to roam across sea and land, never
resting or knowing ease until he comes at last
to some far country where salt too is a stranger
and no traveller has ever brought word to those
who dwell there, or led them to imagine
the immeasurable vastness, the restless expanse
of the great ocean, that is the circumference,
the greater part of an unknown world.

(c) Helen Lowe, 2006

Published Takake 62

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Over the past few weeks I’ve been featuring “legendary” poems and to round it off thought I’d re-feature one of my own.

The Wayfarer is the seventh and (to date) final poem in my Ithaca Conversations sequence, which  reflects my long held love of myth and legend, a love which began when my Standard 4 teacher, Mrs Hook, placed a colourful poster of the “Twelve Olympians” on our classroom wall. I was fascinated, absorbed … and read every book about the Greek myths that I could lay my hands on. The reading process continued into adult life, with translations of Ovid, Homer, and less mythic but equally legendary stories such as Xenophon’s Anabasis, as well as novels such as Robert Graves’ Homer’s Daughter. But the Iliad and the Odyssey were amongst my earliest loves and the power they exerted over my imagination is best evidenced by the way they continue to infiltrate my poetry and short fiction—and that the novels I write are centred around epic, legend and myth, both in what is loosely our world (Thornspell) and alternate worlds (The Wall of Night Series.)

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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

And here, for more local readers, is the panui:

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Catalyst: Rolling Like Thunder Since 2003

(Yup, 10 years folks — spewing literary lava since 2003!)

Catalyst Open Mic

Wednesday 7th August, 8pm

The Darkroom 336 St Asaph St

SEE YOU THERE!
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“…you’ve kept going with the books even with all the quake and post quake stress. You should be really proud of yourself! :)”

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Wen’s comment came via webmail—and it is certainly true that not just the 18 months of awful, from September 2010 through to December 2011, but also the aftermath of the earthquakes that shattered Christchurch has been stressful in the extreme. Because, dear readers, neither shattered physical environments, nor emotional ones, whether for individuals, families, or communities, can be put right ‘just like that.’ It all takes time, and when you’re in it, the experience  becomes like those mills that grind both exceedingly slowly as well as exceedingly small.

So yes, keeping going at all on the books has felt  like a labour of Sisyphus—and I feel that everyone in Christchurch who has “kept going” should be proud. Really though, I think I said it best in the conclusion to one of my earthquake poems:

This Will be Us

“…and only fleetingly imagine
the reality that these people —
flickers on a newsreel,
stills in a frame —
experienced, lived through,
endured.”

“The sound of the language is where it all begins and what it all comes back to. The basic elements of language are physical: the noise words make and the rhythm of their relationships. This is just as true of written prose as it is of poetry, though the sound effects of prose are usually subtle and always irregular.”

~ Ursula Le Guin, Steering The Craft

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I am currently doing a series of Saturday quotes from Ursula Le Guin’s book on writing titled Steering The Craft. If you haven’t already encountered it, then hie thee to thy local library or bookshop at once—because as I’ve said in previous weeks, it is Absolutely My Favourite Work on the art, and craft, bloodstained toil, and sheer joy of writing.

The above quote is one of the reasons why: how many other tomes on writing do you know that discuss the sound of prose? Yet Le Guin is absolutely right, in my humble opinion: the sound of your language, the oral rhythm and flow of it, lie at the heart of great prose.

Le Guin provides several examples in Steering The Craft — but consider this as well, from the opening page of Dickens’ Bleak House:

“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights.  …”

Don’t you just love it? I know I do!

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is traversing the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth. Currently, we’re in “G.” 😉

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Grayharbor:  the northenmost settlement between the River and the Wall of Night

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‘ Malian narrowed her eyes at the flock of starlings swirling across the sky behind his head, a sure sign that evening was drawing in.  “The Band has eyes-and-ears amongst the caravans that journey to the Border Mark, and also in the Grayharbor warehouses that specialize in the Wall trade. ‘

~ from ©  The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 27 — Rumor and Doubt